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Macpherson
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Macquarie

important post of Gwalior, the capital of Sindhia, the most powerful native ruler in Central India. The agent, Sir Robert North Hamilton [q. v.], supported Macpherson's policy in everything. Sindhia's minister, Dinkar Rao, was a statesman of the first order; and Macpherson took care that his administrative genius should have free play. He abolished the transit duties; laid out large sums on the roads and public works; drew up a capital code of law and civil procedure, and raised the revenue from a deficit to a surplus.

Macpherson's support of Dinkar was repaid with interest. When the Sipahi mutinies broke out in 1857, it was Dinkar, influenced by Macpherson, who kept the Gwalior contingent and Sindhia's own army from joining the rebels in Delhi. Macpherson lived to see the mutiny suppressed; but the strain upon his health had teen too great. In April 1860 he was seized with illness, and died, on his way to Calcutta, on 15 April. After his death he was gazetted a companion of the Bath.

[Memorials of Service in India, from the Correspondence of Major S. C. Macpherson, edited by his brother, W. Macpherson, with portrait, 1865.]

G. G.

MACPHERSON, WILLIAM (1812–1893), legal writer, born 19 July 1812, was brother of John Macpherson [q. v.] and of Samuel Charters Macpherson [q. v.] He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B. A. in 1834, and M.A. in 1838. Called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1837, he published in 1841 a 'Practical Treatise on the Law relating to Infants' (Edinburgh, 8vo), which attracted notice owing to its learning and accuracy. In 1846 he went to India to practise at the Indian bar, and in 1848 was given by Sir Laurence Peel, chief-justice of Bengal, the post of master of equity in the supreme court in Calcutta. His 'Procedure of the Civil Courts of India' (Calcutta, 1850, 8vo) became at once a recognised authority, reaching a fifth edition in 1871, and his 'Outlines of the Law of Contracts as administered in the Courts of British India' was issued in London in 1860. He spent nearly two years (1854-5) in England on leave, and finally left India in March 1859. In October 1860 he was entrusted by John Murray the publisher with the editorship of the 'Quarterly Review.' He held that office till October 1867, contributing three articles to the ' Review,' viz. 'Scottish Character' (July 1861), 'The Stanhope Miscellanies' (January 1863), and 'Law Reform' (October 1864). In December 1861 he had become secretary of the Indian Law. Commission, which was appointed to prepare a body of substantive law for India, and he withdrew from literary work in 1867 in order to devote himself solely to that work. The Indian Succession Act of 1865 illustrates the value of the commission's labours, but owing to the Indian government's desire to exercise more direct control over the undertaking, the commission was dissolved in December 1870. Macpherson thereupon returned to the bar, and practised chiefly before the privy council. His useful 'Practice of the Privy Council Judicial Committee,' first published in 1860, reached a second edition in 1873. In 1874 he began reporting the Indian appeals before the privy council for the Council of Law Reporting. In June 1874 he became legal adviser to the India office, and in September 1879 exchanged that post for that of secretary in the judicial department. He retired from the India office 20 Feb. 1882. 'Memorials' by him of his brother, Samuel Charters Macpherson, appeared in 1865. He died in London 20 April 1893. He married, 9 Jan. 1851, Diana Macleod Johnston, who died in 1880, and left issue.

[Times, 24 April 1893; Brit. Mas. Cat.; private information.]

G. G.

MACQUARIE, LACHLAN (d. 1824), major-general and governor of New South Wales, came of an old Scottish family which had been established for many generations on the island of Ulva, near Mull. His father, Lauchlan Macquarrie (the son seems to have dropped the second r), was the sixteenth chief of the clan (Anderson, Scottish Nation. vol. iii.) Lachlan, the eldest son, entered the army on 9 April 1777 as ensign in the 2nd battalion of the 84th regiment of foot. From 1777 to 1781 he served in Halifax and other parts of Nova Scotia, but not in the field. On 18 Jan. 1781 he was transferred as lieutenant to the 71st regiment, and served in New York and Charlestown on garrison duty at the close of the war with the United States, and afterwards in Jamaica till 1784, when he was placed for a time on half-pay. On 25 Dec. 1787 he received a commission as lieutenant in the 77th regiment, which proceeded to India. On 9 Nov. 1788 he was promoted to be captain. In India he saw his first active service, being present at the sieges of Cannanore in 1790, and Seringpatam in 1791. He was in the field in Cochin China in 1795, and Ceylon in 1796. On 3 May 1796 he became major by brevet. He was at the second siege of Seringapatam in 1799; in the following year he was in Egypt and at the siege of Alexandria. On 12 March in